BookMyShow valuation soars to $850M after the $100M fundraise

Online entertainment ticketing platform Bigtree Entertainment Pvt Ltd which owns and operates BookMyShow has raised $100 million (Rs 685 crore) in its latest round of investment.

The Series D funding was led by TPG Growth, the middle market and growth equity investment platform of alternative asset firm TPG along with participation from existing investors.

While the firm did not disclose the details on the other investors, Stripes Group and Network18 were amongst those who participated in this round along with TPG, according to people familiar with the development.

The investment values BookMyShow at about $750 million (Rs 5,140 crore) pre-money thus taking the final valuation for the firm to $850 million, according to two people aware of the transaction details. BookMyShow was last valued at $450-460 million (Rs 3,194 crore) when it raised Rs 550 crore from Stripes Group in 2016.

“TPG Growth brings with them extensive experience across the global media and entertainment sector, which will be instrumental as we look to accelerate our growth plans in this space,” said Ashish Hemrajani, Founder and CEO, BookMyShow in a statement.

The fundraise comes at a time when BookMyShow has been waging a hefty battle with Paytm in the online movie ticketing space and claims to sell between 12-15 million tickets per month with an active user base of over 30 million customers.

In comparison competitor Paytm claims to have sold 52 million tickets last year growing 500% in volumes since its launch in May 2016.

BookMyShow is looking to scale its non-movie business over the next two years to bring it at par with its bread-and-butter movie ticketing segment to maintain its leadership position in the online entertainment ticketing space.

A significant portion of the capital raised will be used to scale its non-movie business from 30% to about 50% of the revenue pie by 2020. The non-movie ticketing business has been growing at about 60% annually since 2012 for the firm.

The firm’s audio entertainment offering Jukebox which was launched last year has grown at about 45% monthly in terms of user growth with a repertoire of over 2 million songs.

Industry experts tracking the space peg BookMyShow’s movie ticketing segment to have grown at over 25-30% annually with the firm having clawed back to retain its market leadership position in FY18.

BookMyShow’s operational revenues grew 27% to Rs 300 crore in FY17 while losses rose to Rs 139 crore during the same year compared to Rs 1 crore the year ago.

BookMyShow is yet to file its financials for FY18 with the registrar of companies. The company is present across over 4,500 screens in about 650 cities while Paytm offers movie tickets for about 4,000 screens across a similar breadth of cities. Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial advisor to BookMyShow during this round.